Some commercial office buildings are adorned with water fountains and/or artificial waterfalls. These water fountains and artificial water falls typically re-circulate water to achieve the desired decorative effect. Certain types of industrial equipment also re-circulate water. One such industrial application for re-circulating water is a conventional heat exchanger 110 such as a cooler illustrated in FIG. 1. The heat exchanger 110 re-circulates water W in a water basin 112 via a pump 114 that connects with a downstream conduit 116. The downstream conduit 116 is connected to and between the pump 114 and a manifold 118 having spray nozzles 120. The water W is then sprayed over a coil assembly 122 through the spray nozzles 120. Hot fluid represented by the hot fluid arrow enters into the coil assembly 122, flows therethrough and exits the coil assembly 122 as cooled fluid represented by the cooled fluid arrow. Simultaneously therewith, ambient air represented by the ambient air arrow is drawn through the heat exchanger 110 by a fan 124 disposed on the top of the heat exchanger 110. The fan 124 draws the ambient air into the heat exchanger 110 through a plurality of louvers 126. In turn, the drawn-in ambient air flows over the wetted coil assembly 122 to cool the hot fluid flowing therethrough and then exits the heat exchanger 110 through the fan 124. Much of the sprayed water W that wets the coil assembly 122 rains back into the water basin 112 thereby completing the re-circulation of the water W from the water basin 112.
Often, it is desirable to treat the water that re-circulates in these structures. The water re-circulating through these structures is typically treated by chemicals to inhibit corrosion and scaling, to reduce or eliminate growth of biomass and/or to reduce or eliminate odor. These chemicals might be in solid or liquid form. In the solid form, these chemicals might be provided as blocks, pellets or granules, to name a few. In the pellet form, these pellets are impregnated with the appropriate water treating chemical. Once in contact with the re-circulating water, the water treating chemical leaches from the pellets in a time-release fashion without the pellets themselves being dissolved or otherwise being consumed.
It would be advantageous to provide a water treatment feeder device that can be easily and quickly loaded with chemically-laden water treatment pellets and can be easily and quickly unloaded of spent water treatment pellets. It would be beneficial to provide a water treatment feeder system that can be can be loaded or unloaded while the water re-circulating structure is either operating or not. It would be advantageous to provide a package of water treatment pellets to facilitate the ease and quickness of loading and unloading the water treatment pellets. It would be beneficial if the water treatment feeder device can be drained for loading and unloading while the water re-circulating structure is operating or not. The present invention provides these advantages and benefits.